


The Things We Love and Lose

by Remki



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-19
Updated: 2011-01-19
Packaged: 2017-10-14 21:22:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Remki/pseuds/Remki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The prompt was "Kid!Sherlock and Teddy!John". Somehow, it became this, a series of small vignettes documenting Sherlock in various ages, and the bear that loved him through all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Things We Love and Lose

One never knew how to really appreciate life, the bear thought, until one had been torn to bits and then sewn back together again. He was never quite sure how he had ended up in the beasts mouth, or indeed even quite where he came from. Images of cherry wood shelves and dust in sunlight and the sound of a bell and squeaky door hinges occasionally came back to him, floating through his mind like dandelion tufts in a breeze. Someone had brought him down that road, that was for certain. Maybe a man, with a dapper hat and a big red nose. Or had the red nose been on the man in the shop? The bear didn't know. He couldn't remember. It was all such a jumble in his head, mixed and tossed and dashed about by the dog as it worried him in the street and left him in the gutter, alone and broken.

The boy had come in the early hours of the morning. Through his button eyes, the bear could see only his shiny black pair of shoes, walking neatly along the grime and dirt of the alleyway. It was the first movement he had seen in hours, aside from the sparrows. But the sparrows were mean and pecked at his fur for the bugs and bits of things to eat, and hurt.

He didn't like the sparrows.

"Hullo," said a voice belonging to the shiny black shoes. They had stopped in neat order right along side the bear. "What's this?"

In a moment, the bear had been picked up and turned round until his dark button eyes were facing a young boy.

"Well well, a teddy bear, and all the way down here. What are you doing here, teddy?" the boy asked. Of course the bear couldn't answer, though he desperately wanted to. He examined the face of the boy intently with his shining eyes instead. The boy had a lean face, with a sharp nose like a pointed knife, and thin lips. He would have looked rather severe, except for the mischief in his blue eyes, and the small hint of chub around his cheeks that softened the features into something a little kindlier. He was a sharp one, alright, but not a bad one, the bear could tell.

"Do you know, bear? I think I have the perfect plan for you. It looks like you've seen the war right now, but with a little cleaning and some thread, you'll look as good as new." The boy stared hard at the bear for a moment, and a corner of his mouth twitched up apologetically. "Or near enough, anyway."

\-------

The bear had never liked small spaces, and being shoved into a box so unceremoniously, so soon after being fixed, had left him irritated and bored. What could you stare at in a box? There was darkness, and more darkness, and darkness still. Occasionally, when he forgot himself and let his mind slip, images of the dog and its ferocious teeth came welling up through the dark, and left the bear feeling small and scared. The sparrows were there too, picking his fur little by little until it came off, and he was nothing but unraveling threads.

No, the bear didn't like it in the box, not a bit.

How long he was there, the bear didn't know. Time was irrelevant to toys. It was the little things that made up their order, the sights and sounds and experiences that made them feel alive. So being in a box was like being dead, a waking death where nothing ever happened and no one ever came, and the only thing keeping the bear from disappearing -mind and soul- into the blackness around him was the memory of light, of trees, or shelves and dust and a little boys’ hands gently sewing his torn arm back into place. These things kept the bear from disappearing all together from his worldly shell. And so he waited.

One day, the bear could feel the box being moved. Though the bear could put no definite time on it, the box hadn't been touched in weeks. And now suddenly there was motion, and the sound of feet and voices around him, muffled by the cardboard.

"What's that, Mycroft?" a woman's voice asked. It was high and delicate sounding, and the bear recognized the voice of the boy who had rescued him as he answered it respectfully.

"It's a birthday present for Sherlock, mummy."

"A present! How nice. But where did you get it, dear? I don't remember giving you any money..."

"I found it, and fixed it. Don't worry, mummy, it's completely safe."

"Alright then, as long as it's not another dead animal. I told you before-"

"I know. 'No animal experimentation under the age of 12'. It's just a toy, I promise you."

Whatever Mycroft’s mother had thought about this promise, she didn't say, and soon the boy and the bear were moving again, and then the bear felt the box be set down once more. This time, however, it was somewhere much more public, because he could hear the coming and going of people around him, and catch the thread of conversations being held, mostly between Mycroft and Mummy, occasionally between Mycroft and a man who sounded much older than either Mycroft or Mummy had sounded. Finally, when the bear thought he could stand it no more, something seemed to change in the room. There was a new element in the conversations, and a new voice too. A high one, young but very articulate, and quiet as well.

"Are those my presents?" it asked.

The others seemed surprised.

"Sherlock! What are you doing here, sweetheart? You were supposed to be at school for another hour."

"I was sent home early," the young voice answered.

"Whatever for?" Mummy asked. Mycroft answered for Sherlock,

"He's been fighting again, mummy."

"Oh, Sherlock." Mummy sounded sad, and disappointed, but not surprised.

"It's alright, mummy," Sherlock said in a matter of fact tone. "I won."

"Sherlock, that's not--"

"Leave it, dear," the older mans voice suddenly pipped in. "It's his birthday, after all."

"Yes, I guess your right," Mummy replied with a resigned sigh. "Alright, Sherlock, since you've seen them already, do you want to open your presents now?"

Mycroft pipped in before Sherlock could answer. "And no guessing at them before you open them, Sherlock. You know how it ruins it for everybody."

Sherlock didn't say anything, but grunted an acquisition. A sound like a bag being dropped on a hardwood floor followed, and then the box was being lifted from it's position. The bear felt a flutter in it's heart (for, while bears were made up of stuffing, it was entirely possible for them to have a heart; it just tended to be a slightly denser area of stuffing) and he hopped that at long last his time had come.

"No, Sherlock. Open Father's first," Mummy said. The bear felt his box being put down again, and he fought the urge to scream inside his own head. No more darkness, please! he thought.

There was the sound of paper rustling and being ripped.

"Oh! Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body! Thank you, Father!"

"James, I thought we agreed--"

"Let the boy have his fun, Molly."

Mummy huffed a little huff of disapproval, and said nothing.

"Mummy's next, Sherlock," Father said.

Mummy had gotten Sherlock a new jumper, a thick warm wool one. If Sherlock was disappointed or unhappy with it, he said nothing, and his voice didn't betray any emotion but gratitude.

"And now mine," Mycroft said.

Oh! Thought the bear. The box was moving at last, and he knew what was coming. There was the sound of the paper ripping and being pulled away. And there! a crack of light that grew and grew until the hole above him was lit up, and suddenly he was being lifted free and clear of that horrid prison by small, delicate hands that gripped his cream-colored fur gently and turned the bear to face their owner.

The bear's first impression of Sherlock was paleness. Pale eyes, pale skin, pale lips, all set off in stark contrast to the dark, delicate curls that framed his small face, and the black school jumper below it. There was no smile on the boys face, and for a moment he didn't say anything. The bear worried about that. He couldn't read what those young eyes were thinking, and he hoped that he didn't look too bad. He knew the spot where the dog had torn him wasn't perfect, and that it puckered awkwardly where Mycroft had fixed it with needle and thread, but surely that wasn't enough to make him ugly. Or did the boy not like bears? All kinds of worries flooded the bear’s mind as Sherlock stood there in silence, staring hard at the bear’s button eyes, his thread nose, and his soft cream fur. And all of those silly worries fled in an instant, as Sherlock gave a small smile -so small that it could barely be called a smile at all- and said,

"I think I'll call him 'John'."

\-------------------

"Look, it's the fre~ak!"

"Weirdo!"

"Crazy!"

"Loser!"

"Freak! Freak, freak, freak!"

"Don't listen to them, John," Sherlock said, as he finished his examination of the dead bird. John felt he should feel sorry for it somehow, but it was a sparrow, and somehow he couldn't find it in himself. It made a good test subject for Sherlock, at any rate. The young boy had taken it from where he had originally found it -under a bush along the road to the park- and placed it on a small bit of metal mesh wiring he had ripped off the side of a dilapidated old park play structure. This he had propped up on top of four rocks to form a kind of platform, as much in the sun as he could possibly find in the shaded park where Mummy had sent him to play. What it was supposed to do, John had no idea, but he knew given enough time, Sherlock would explain it to him.

He didn't have to wait long. "You see, John, I hypothesize that if I place this bird on the wiring, it should allow enough air flow to increase the rate of decay. Add in as much sun exposure as possible, and hopefully the detritus eaters will soon find a nice home in it, and strip it down to it's bare bones. That's what I want, John, the bones."

John thought it was fascinating, but he wasn't sure how Sherlock expected the bird to stay put, given how many cats there were in the neighborhood.

"Aw, look at the freak, talking to his little bear!"

A sudden hand, seemingly coming from nowhere, wrapped itself around Johns middle and squeezed tight. John was lifted high in the air, and found himself suddenly looking down at the top of the dark head of Sally, a girl from Sherlock's school who they knew all too well, and Sherlock -who had lept to his feet- and was standing stock still with his hands clenched in tight fists at his side.

"Give him back, Sally," Sherlock said quietly. Though he couldn't see it, by the expression on Sherlock's face, John was sure the older girl had smirked.

"You've been carrying this bear with you everywhere for years now, _Shirley_. Don't you think it's time you grew up?"

"I said, _give him back_ ," Sherlock ground out from between his teeth.

"Or what? Look at you, 10 years old and still talking to your imaginary friends. Do you believe in the Easter Bunny too?"

Sherlock snorted. "At least I don't still believe in Santa, _Sally_." Sherlock stared at her pointedly.

"What does that mean?" Sally asked. John could hear the indignation in her voice, but even he could tell that Sherlock had struck a nerve.

"Oh, I don't know," Sherlock answered all-too-casually. "Only that you still write to Santa asking for the toys you want, _and_ you post it to the North Pole."

"I do not! And the North Pole is real, you freak!"

"The North Pole might be real, but there's no Santa to read your letters, Sally. You're 12 years old, you should know that by now."

John felt the hand holding him start trembling, and it suddenly lowered, bringing John to be pressed against the girls chest. "Shut up!" she shouted. Sherlock smirked.

"You even still believe in the elves and the reindeer too. How very _droll_."

"I said shut up, you freak! You stupid, arrogant, crazy freak! Here, take your stupid bear! At least _I_ have REAL friends, so you can shove it!"

John was suddenly flung forward, and he landed painfully on the dead bird, before bouncing off and falling face first in the dirt, the dead sparrow fallen beside him. He could hear the sound of Sally running away across the park. When she was gone, Sherlock bent forward and picked up the bear, turning him around and inspecting him with a careful eye before dusting him off.

"We'll have to clean you at home. Can't have you festering with bird lice, can we?" Sherlock said, and shook his head.

Bird lice? John thought. Great. A day of getting wet and then spending the night drying on the outside line.

Stupid sparrows.

\-----------------

"You don't seriously still have that thing, do you?"

From his space on the shelf, John watched Sally as she stared up at him with amusement. Behind her, Sherlock was seated at his desk. He didn't turn around, but answered without looking,

"Of course. I find him good company. Now do you want me to help you with these problems, or will you be going home?"

Sally turned away from John with an irritated look. "Geeze, freak. It's called making conversation. Why don't you try it sometime?"

"We're not here to make conversation, Sally, we're here because you asked me to help you pass your Calculus class. Or do you really feel like repeating year 11?"

"Fine, fine, whatever," Sally answered, raising her hands in surrender. She went to a chair next to Sherlock at his desk, and sat down. Sherlock, with an irritated glance, turned the book towards her and began to rattle off a complicated explanation of some advance mathematical equation that involved way too many numbers and weird symbol names for the bear to follow. He focused instead on watching Sally, who in her turn didn't seem to be paying much attention to Sherlock's explanation either. In fact, she seemed fixated on his face. Sherlock, John knew, was completely aware of this fact, and had chosen to ignore it for as long as Sally would let him.

It wasn't very long.

At a pause in the explanation, when Sherlock had taken a moment to breath, Sally pounced. Before the boy could react, Sally hand leaned forward and pressed her lips against his, her hands reaching up to grab his shoulders. For his part, and to John’s immense amusement and vicarious embarrassment, Sherlock's reaction to these advances was to literally throw himself _backwards_ off of his chair, bringing the chair, the book, and Sally with him crashing to the floor in a tangled mess.

"What the hell, Sherlock?!" Sally demanded as she desperately tried to untangle herself from the boy and the overturned chair.

Sherlock glared up at her. "I could ask you the same thing!" he yelled back.

"It was a KISS, Sherlock! Haven't you ever been kissed before?"

Sherlock didn't answer the question. Instead he, too, untangled himself from the chair and stood with an indignant huff. "I thought you came here to _learn_ , Sally!"

"I DID! But thing's happen, you know! And I LIKE you, Sherlock. You don't have to act like it's some kind of INSULT or something!"

"It's an insult to my intelligence if you think I'd ever agree to tutor you just so you could make some kind of strange advance."

Sally threw her hands up in anger and shook her head. "Oh, GOD, Sherlock! I thought I was wrong about you, that maybe there really WAS a person somewhere under all that fucking clinical bullshit. But I was wrong on that, wasn't I?" She glared at him, hurt and anger making her eyes shine with held-back tears and her lips pinch in rage.

Sherlock, in contrast, stood up straighter and straightened out his wrinkled jacket. He looked at her with a cold deadpan stare.

"I think you need to leave now," he said coolly.

Sally stared at him, mouth gaping as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Then, as if it was a trap triggered, her mouth snapped shut, and she narrowed her eyes.

"You know what? I think you're right. I never could stand being around _freaks_."

And with that she was gone, the door slamming shut behind her. Sherlock stood for a few moments, listening to her go. When it was clear that she had left the house, he sighed, picked up the fallen book, and put it back on the desk. After that was done, he seemed to be at a loss what to do next. He glanced around the room, searching for something, anything, and suddenly his eyes lighted on John. He walked slowly over to the shelf where the bear had been resting for the last year or so, and picked him up with a sigh.

"I really messed that one up, John."

It wasn't a question, and the bear was more than a little inclined to agree. He wanted to tell the boy, it's alright, you're only 14, she won't be mad at you forever, but instead he settled for trying to convey through his button eye -singular, one had been lost on a school trip to the sea- a look of commiseration and sympathy. Whether Sherlock saw it or not, John didn't know. The boy sighed again, and pulled the bear to his chest before flopping on his bed.

"She'll get over it," Sherlock said into his pillow.

John hoped that was true.

\--------------------

Years and years and years of darkness. Years of nothing and nothing, and nothing again. No sight, no sound, no feeling either, nothing but the memories, and those were fading too. So little left to hold him there, so little left to keep the bear together and remembering. Nothing but a name. John, he told himself as the darkness wore on. John, John, John.

Sherlock....

\--------------------

"Sherlock?"

"Hm?"

"What's this?"

If someone had walked into the flat at 221B Baker Street, they might have mistakenly thought that some sort of disaster had taken place. Boxes and bags and equipment and even more boxes were strewn every which way, in every kind of varying state of unpacked that you could possibly imagine. In the middle of of this chaos, nearly dwarfed by the stacks and piles, two men were busy sorting through, throwing things into certain stacks or boxes, though whether this was to repack them or merely misplace them, it wasn't clear. The tallest of the two, a young man with dark curling hair and pale eyes, turned to face his companion.

"What's what?"

"This," the shorter man said. He held up his hand. In it was clutched a small toy, a dirty excuse for a teddy bear, it's cream colored fur so matted and filthy that it was nearly brown, with one eye missing and the other barely hanging on by a thread, and it's left arm strangely puckered near the shoulder. Sherlock stared at it for a moment, strangely wide eyed. His companion gave him a look of confusion.

"Sherlock?"

"I would say it's quite obvious what it is, John," Sherlock answered. John looked down at the bear with a skeptical eye.

"I know what it IS. I'm not stupid, you know. I meant what is it doing here, of all places? Do you think it belonged to the victim?"

"No," Sherlock said, distantly. He reached out a hand and gently took the bear from the good doctor. John stared at him again, unsure what exactly was going on. Sherlock looked almost...nostalgic. It was a strange and foreign expression on the detectives face, and John wasn't sure what to make of it.

"Well, if it's not the victim’s, then where did it come from? I didn't think the man had any family, let alone a child."

"It's not the victim's, John," Sherlock reiterated, and then added, "It's mine."

John spluttered.

"W-what? YOURS? How can it be yours? This is the victims things!"

"I expect Mycroft had something to do with it," Sherlock said, his brow knitting in irritation at the thought of his brother. John raised an eyebrow.

"And why would he do that?" he asked.

Sherlock smiled. While not an innocent or true smile, somehow John thought that it seemed a little less cynical than usual.

"Because it's my birthday," Sherlock answered.

John was surprised. He had never realized until then, but in their time together, John had never known Sherlock's birthday. He felt a small pang of guilt that it had never occurred to him to even ask. He stared at the small, dirty bear in the grown mans hands, and realized that in that instant he had been given a strange, intimate glimpse at a part of Sherlock that almost no one would ever get to see, certainly not anything that John had ever been expecting. Sherlock looked at the bear with a level of fondness he had only ever seen the detective give to the thought of particularly good cases, great violinists and -occasionally, confusingly- to John as well. It struck a chord with the doctor, and he shuffled on his feet and cleared his throat to try and hide it.

"Oh," he said at last. "Well. Happy Birthday, then. What was it's name?"

Sherlock laughed, and looked up at John then.

"After all this time, John? No, if it had a name once, I've certainly forgotten it," the detective answered. In that moment, that tiny glimpse at the other Sherlock that John had seen slipped away, and the Sherlock he knew so well returned. The detective put the bear down next to his laptop and turned away from it.

"No more distractions, doctor! Back to work!"

John sighed, and cast a look of hopelessness at the bear. With it's sad little form and one eye, it seemed to be commiserating.

"Fine then," John said. "Back to work."

\--------------

It was the early hours of the morning, and the cold blue light of the dawn was seeping in like ice water through the ratty curtains of the flat. At some point in the night, John had finally called it quits and left Sherlock for the warmth and comfort of bed. The detective had continued to sort through the endless bags and boxes until, finally, he could no longer stand. With a graceful _whump_ , he threw himself into his chair and opened up his notebook to email Lestrade and ask them to come and take the stuff away. It was painfully obvious now that the document had been removed before the police arrived, and it was a a matter of time and quick thinking in retrieving it.

Sherlock was just about to start typing, when his gaze fell on the bear sitting dolefully beside his computer, where he had left it. For a second, the detective hesitated, and then he reached out a hand and picked up the bear. He smiled at it, a small, almost apologetic smile, and ran a hand down it's squashed in face and over it's one remaining eye. It stared up at him, or really, it's loose button eye stared somewhere near his collarbone.

With a quick glance behind him to make sure his flatmate wasn't there to see, Sherlock pulled the bear close, bringing it's little ear near his face, and whispered,

"Hello, John."

In it's mind, the bear smiled to itself, a tired, satisfied smile, and relaxed into Sherlock's hands.

 _Hello, Sherlock._


End file.
